WPP is spending $70 million on Snapchat ads

On behalf of its clients, ad giant WPP is spending about $70 million (£56 million) with Snapchat, the company’s chief executive Martin Sorrell said on Tuesday at the UBS Media and Communications Conference, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The figure is just a pinch of the money it spends on other digital platforms — in October Sorrell said WPP will spend $5 billion (£4 billion) with Google this year, up from $4 billion (£3.2 billion) in 2015. That year the company spent $1 billion (£800 million) with Facebook.

At the conference, Sorrell also said that WPP will continue to increase its spending with Facebook, which has been “trying to undermine Snapchat.”

The $70 million represents a sizeable chunk of Snapchat’s total ad revenues: its parent company Snap Inc., which is currently preparing for an IPO, told investors that it expects to make $250 million to $350 million in advertising revenue this year.

That figure could grow to almost $1 billion (£795 million) by 2017 according to analysts at eMarketer, TechCrunch reported: ” a jump it [eMarketer] attributes to Snapchat’s ability to reach younger millennials, a wider ad portfolio, and ad targeting improvements.”